National Chemistry Week STEM Fest

The local chapter of the American Chemical Society (ACS) sponsored the 2021 STEM Fest at the Omega Event Center in Elkhart this Saturday. It was a massive collaboration of organizations and campuses. The ACS was joined by the E3 Robotics Center, American Electric Power, and the Coast Guard Auxiliary as well as students from the University of Notre Dame, Andrews University, and our own students from the Biology-Chemistry Club. This event was held at the end of National Chemistry Week on October 23 which is also known as "Mole Day" for the association of the date 10/23 with the power of Avogadro's number (6.022*10^23) of entities in one mole of a substance. The theme for this year was catalysis as seen in the logo at the below taken from the ACS website. Thanks to everyone for their hard work to instill an appreciation and curiosity for the science around us.

Students Present Their Summer Research

This past summer was abuzz with mentored student STEM research supported with SMART grants, LSAMP grants, external faculty grants, and work-study funds. Much, but not all, of the this research was presented through poster talks in Weikamp Hall on Friday, October 1. The students' mentors and research projects are listed below. Thanks to everyone who participated: students for their had work during the summer; faculty for serving as mentors; Dr. Grace Muna for managing the LSAMP program; and the university for funding the SMART and work-study program.

Department of Biological Sciences

Marcus Bailey with mentor Deborah Marr

Effects of the understory shrub Lindera benzoin (Spicebush) on maple and beech tree seeding abundance in an Old Growth Indiana Forest 
 

Rose Inchauregui with mentor Deborah Marr

Changes in Canopy and Understory Asimina triloba (Paw paw) Abundance in an Old Growth Indiana Forest

 

Hasan Al-Robaee with mentor Thomas Clark

Projecting changes in the societal burden of cancer with the obesity epidemic

Aurora Easton with mentor Thomas Clark

Projecting Changes in Societal Burden of Diabetes Mellitus and Cardiovascular Disease with Rising Obesity Rates

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

 
Melyse Ishimwe with mentor Shahir Rizk

Structure- Based Design of PhuZ Mutants for Polymerization Analysis
 

Myree Finley with mentor Kasey J. Clear

Stability and Luminescent Properties of Terbium Complexes with L-DOPA, Dopamine, and Catechol 
 

Sabrah Alajmi with mentor Kasey J. Clear

Phosphate Removal from Water using Cross-linked Polymer Networks 

Emily Saray Barrera with mentor Grace Muna
Electroanalytical Performance of Antimony Modified Glassy Carbon Electrode in Detecting Lead and Cadmium

Lucas Robinson with mentor Grace Muna
Investigating the Electroanalytical Performance of Bismuth-Antimony Film on Glassy Carbon Electrode in Detecting Lead and Cadmium

The Biology-Chemistry Club is Active Again

Social and academic events were minimal last year due to the pandemic, but things are getting back to normal this year.  Most of our classes are on campus as students are engaged in all the usual activities, although cautiously wearing facemasks indoors. The Biology-Chemistry Club held a welcome party with pizza and drinks on the second week of classes and last week they invited biochemistry alumna Maggie Fink to give a talk on graduate school. Fink is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Notre Dame supported by a prestigious NSF graduate research fellowship. While at IU South Bend, she worked in the lab of biochemist Shahir Rizk. If you haven't thought about graduate school and missed this talk, please visit any of your professors to hear what it is like. You may be surprised that the school pays you instead of the other way around - and that research, rather than classes, is the focus.

Staff Appreciation Day

Today our campus held a picnic at the Potawatomi Zoo for our staff and honored those with milestone years of service. Pictured on the left is Brenda Beatty in line to get her lunch; then in middle she is next to Chancellor Elrod to receive her award for 15 years of service at IU South Bend.  Beatty sets up and takes down equipment and solutions for our freshman chemistry and organic chemistry lab courses - and she also helps with chemical waste disposal from all of our classes. Pictured on the right is Jennie Downs who is secretary to both our department and the Department of Biological Sciences. For a short while she was also working with the Department of Computer Science and almost moved her office further upstairs in Northside Hall, but we are glad we once again must share her only with our biology buddies. Not pictured is Connie Fox who is our laboratory director with so many years of experience and good judgement that she is often the first person that past department chair Gretchen Anderson and current department chair Matt Marmorino seek for guidance. Thank you to all of our staff for their excellent work to keep our department running smoothly.

Welcome To Three New Adjuncts

Bonnie Huge (pictured left with her family)

Bonnie Huge is a new adjunct professor for our department this semester teaching the freshman laboratory CHEM-C 121 Elementary Chemistry Laboratory in the evening.  But she is not new to IU South Bend because she earned her undergraduate degree in chemistry from our department.  Since then she studied further and earned a Ph.D. degree at the University of Notre Dame where she now works as a research scientist. Huge's research focuses on developing capillary electrophoresis based approaches and instrumentation. These developments are applied to the challenge of separating the complex mixtures of microorganisms present in microbiomes in order to increase our understanding of these crucial inhabitants.

Lacy Buck (middle picture in her high school classroom)

Lacy Buck is not a new adjunct professor, but returns to us after several years during which she lived and worked in Arizona. She and her family just couldn't give up being Hoosiers and their extended family so they came back to their roots in Indiana.  Buck used to teach our freshman general education course CHEM-N 190 Natural World, but now she is teaching the freshman laboratory CHEM-C 121 in the evening, like Huge.  Also, like Huge, Buck is an alumna of our campus and department. During the day, Buck teaches high school at Plymouth High School which includes teaching CHEM-C 101 and C121 for ACP dual credit to better prepare students for science majors' college chemistry at IU South Bend and other campuses.

Bob Schaeper (pictured right)

Bob Schaeper received his Ph.D. in Chemistry with a specialization in Biochemistry in 1987 from the University of Notre Dame. He then immediately began work at Miles Laboratories in Elkhart which eventually became Bayer HealthCare and then was purchased by Siemens. Schaeper has worked in research/development, product support, quality control, and management - most notably as senior manager of the entire Mishawaka Quality Assurance Department. Schaeper currently works with Stryker Corporation - one of the world's leading medical technology companies - but plans to retire from industry soon. His grown children all have higher degrees in STEM fields. Schaeper coached junior high and high school softball with his teams going to the World Series in Delaware for an unprecedented 10 of 11 straight years, winning twice in a row and placing in the top three several times. Schaeper started teaching with us during the pandemic this past spring. He teaches our science majors' laboratories CHEM-C 125/126 Principles of Chemistry Laboratory I/II.

Summer Research

 

Research in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry was back to normal this summer. The labs of analytical chemist Dr. Muna, biochemist Dr. Rizk, and organic chemist Dr. Clear were all bustling with activity. Most of the students were supported financially by internal SMART grants, LSAMP grants, and even by the faculty member's research grants. The picture above shows Muna's team (left to right): Ushindia Muna, Dr. Muna, Naseem Alfadhl, Lucas Robinson, and Emily Barrera. Can you spot all of the elements in the research descriptions below?

Chemistry major Naseem Alfadhl studied the electrochemical behavior of the biologically important aminothiols cysteine and homocysteine on glassy carbon electrodes modified with a gold (Au) film. Aminothiols, like the more general thiols contain sulfur (S). The effect of the film thickness on performance was determined by measuring the deposition time and potential on the analytical signal from the aminothiols. The goal is to develop a method suitable for detecting aminothiols in real samples such as urine and plasma. 

High school student Ushindi Muna (yes, Dr. Muna's son) worked to develop a calorimetric method using gold nanoparticles that can ultimately determine lead content in soils. In presence of rhodizonic acid, which reacts with lead (Pb), one can observe specific peak signatures with intensities that are dependent on lead concentration. 

Biochemistry major Emily Barrera and chemistry major Lucas Robinson worked on very similar projects. They both worked to develop a sensitive method to detect lead and cadmium (Cd) by employing metallic films on a glassy carbon electrode: a single film of antimony (Sb) for Barrera and a bimetallic film prepared by consecutively electrodepositing antimony (Sb) followed by bismuth (Bi) for Robinson. Antimony and bismuth were used as safer alternatives to toxic mercury (Hg) which has traditionally been used to detect lead. Performance was optimized by examining the effect of the deposition time (thickness) and potential on the electrochemical behavior of the metal coating on the glassy carbon electrode. This analytical method was tested for detecting lead in soil samples and will be used to determine lead and cadmium in local soil and water samples in the fall. 

New Instruments: GC-MS and SPR

This summer our department acquired two instruments. The first (left) is a used GC-MS (gas chromatography mass spectrometer) donated to the university from the New York branch of Ascensia Diabetes Care. Organic chemistry adjunct Dr. James Noffsinger works at Ascensia's South Bend branch and arranged for the donation opportunity. Then IU Foundation officer Patrick McAleer at the Bloomington campus drove to New York to receive it and deliver it to us. Previously we had just one GC-MS for the entire two-semester organic chemistry sequence and research activities. Having two instruments will greatly increase the student experience so that students don't have to rush through an experiment to free the instrument for the next group. And if one instrument fails, we now have a backup.  Thanks very much to Ascensia, Noffsinger, and McAleer for making this happen!

Our second instrument (right) is a surface plasmon resonance (SPR) instrument. This device detects the change in light reflected from a thin metal surface due to molecular interactions taking place on the other side of the surface. This instrument will find use in both our laboratory courses and research. It was purchased new using a combination of funds from the department and two grants from Rizk. We are very excited to see these instruments get a lot of use in next year's lab classes as we return to fully in-person laboratories.

Future Job Market Predictions

Biochemistry professor Shahir Rizk was asked by the job-search engine Zippia ("The Career Experts") to share his thoughts on the job market and career opportunities in the pandemic-recovery and upcoming post-pandemic years.  Naturally, the scientific base of knowledge and skills in one's major is important, but Rizk notes that "Another very important aspect is writing and oral communication. In virtually all sectors of science jobs, the ability to communicate information to different levels of audiences is crucial to success." So please consider your next writing assignment or presentation as a useful training tool for your career rather than just another assignment. Please check out the full post at Zippia here. The image above is compiled from a career profile search at the American Chemical Society (ACS) website. Click here to view more profiles of chemists.

Muna's Lab Looks for Lead Content in Tap Water

Congratulations to Reem Salous who just graduated with a B.S. Chemistry degree and is looking for a job in the chemical industry. She is one of our many graduates this year. Salous finally got her chance to research with Professor Muna this spring after many delays due to the pandemic. She got interested in research due to the CURE (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience) aspect of Muna's chemical instrumentation course in fall 2019 in which students worked on a short research project to substitute for some of the traditional teaching experiments.

In that course students analyzed the lead content of soil samples, but Salous wondered about the lead content in drinking water. This gave birth to her spring research to correlate the amount of lead in water with home location and age. Salous tested water samples from students enrolled in freshman chemistry laboratory courses that Muna taught. Because of the late start to the research project this spring (again, because of the pandemic) the project is incomplete, but Salous laid the foundation and more for summer students to finish the project.  Congratulations to Salous and all of her graduating class for their four years of diligence.

2021 Graduates and Awards

Things still aren't back to normal, but at least this year our graduates were able to enjoy an in-person commencement ceremony. Congratulations to all of our chemistry and biochemistry graduates for their hard work and determination in pursuit of their degrees. Most of our graduates supported themselves by working part time and they all had to adapt to the academic, social, and health hardships of this past pandemic year. We also want to take this time to acknowledge the following winners of scholarships and awards. Have a great summer!

Freshman Chemistry Achievement Award

   Rachel Hall

   Samantha Jones
ACS Undergraduate Analytical Chemistry Award
   Naseem Alfadhl
Undergraduate Award in Organic Chemistry
   Brody Deming

   Megan Fanti

Student Excellence Award in Biochemistry
   Ashley Catanzarite
Joseph H. Ross Seminar Award
   Hunter Richman
George Nazaroff Scholarship
   Naseem Alfadhl
Gretchen Anderson Pathways Scholarship
   Abigael Ngoumape

   Joel Rael
Carolyn & Lawrence Garber Summer Research Scholarship
   Sabrah Alajmi

   Natalie Fox

Learning To Write Op/Ed Pieces with Professor Rizk

This morning, our biochemistry professor Shahir Rizk teamed up with Gail McGuire (Sociology and Anthropology) and April Lidinsky (Women's and Gender Studies Program) to offer a workshop for IU South Bend faculty and staff. They provided instruction in writing op/ed pieces for the public to help encourage outreach to the community by sharing their research and scholarship online and in print. Although op/ed pieces are largely opinion ("op") pieces they are not written by an editor  ("ed") of the publication as the name op/ed might suggest. Actually, op/ed stands for "opposite the editorials". Rizk, McGuire, and Lidinsky have been trained by the OpEd Project.

Three nominees for the SGA Educator of the Year award

Professors Feighery (left), Muna (middle), and Marmorino (right) were all nominated by students for the Educator of the Year award coordinated by the Student Government Association and Office of Student Life. Although the award ultimately went to Dr. Ryan Olivier from the Department of Music in the Ernestine M. Raclin School of the Arts, we are very excited that three faculty from our department were among the nine nominees for the award. Feighery, Muna, and Marmorino have all regularly taught the two courses in our freshman general education program.  Feighery, our inorganic chemist, serves the college as assistant dean, while Marmorino, our physical chemist, is chair of the department.  Muna has a more unique role as manager of the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program on our campus to engage minority students in STEM research.   

Muna publishes in the Journal of Chemical Education

Our department tries to make undergraduate research experiences available to all interested students, but it is not always possible for a variety of reasons. Because of this, Professors Muna and Rizk have integrated research-based experiences into their upper-level laboratory courses so that all students get more than the cook-book type laboratory experiments that are the tradition in many laboratory courses. Muna recently published information about the course-based undergraduate research experience (CURE) that she provides to her students in her instrumentation course CHEM-C 410. Her article describes the students' use of microwave plasma atomic emission spectroscopy (MP-AES) to measure lead content in soil samples. Muna received a lot of positive feedback from students regarding this project. Several students who did not have time for a full research experience, or were nervous to initiate research with a faculty member, were thankful to have this short research experience in class. You can find her article in in the Journal of Chemical Education.

Chemistry Alumna Maggie Fink wins NSF award

Congratulations to our 2019 graduate Maggie Fink who has won an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship.  Fink is currently in the second year of the Ph.D. biochemistry program at the University of Notre Dame. This award will support her work with her Associate Professor Dr. Joshua Shrout to study social interactions within bacteria. The picture of Fink is taken from the Shrout research team webpage. In particular, she is looking at how different species of bacteria can communicate, cooperate, and compete under different conditions. Fink's work is set to uncover the underlying mechanisms by which bacterial crosstalk can inform how they behave in the environment and during infections. 

While at IU South Bend, Fink worked in the lab of Dr. Shahir Rizk of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry where she investigated how bacterial proteins can be used to make novel nanostructures for applications in drug delivery. Her work was funded by the Carolyn and Lawrence Garber Summer Research Fellowship and led to the publication of a research article and a patent.

Fink is active in the community with tutoring and judging science fairs. She also works to make science more accessible to the general public. Through an ongoing collaboration with Professor Rizk, she has developed a blog called Folding Moonlight that uses art and the visual arts and storytelling to illustrate biochemical concepts relating to protein structure.. 

Pi Day Contest

On 3/14 at 3:14 the STEM clubs got together to celebrate Pi Day with baked pies and other culinary creations having something to do with that famous number that is approximately 3.14159. Biology major Salem Slater won the prize for best creation with her pie that is pictured above while chemistry major Reem Salous (who claims it took 3.14 hours to bake her pecan pie, but just 3.14 seconds to eat it) won the random drawing prize. Thanks to everyone who participated.